Praying for a Change: Recitative Literature in the Scholarly Archives of LB Uruk

Late Babylonian Uruk saw significant religious innovations which happened through scholarly reflection, including the elevation of Anu to the head of the civic pantheon and the astralization of religion. However technical were the devices by which the Urukean priest-scholars achieved such innovations, they did so in ways that extended beyond their own tablets, and this led to religious changes within the city. Certainly, one of the strategies to promote these changes was publicly performed ritual, such as the annual Nocturnal Fire Festival with Anu at its center, but spoken elements of ritual also played a role. Prayers, hymns, and incantations, as well as those who wrote them, contributed to the transformation of religious life in Uruk during the late first millennium. These innovations developed from the professions claimed by the scholars themselves, and so my examples will draw from archives belonging to the two known ritual specialist identities at Uruk: the kalû and the āšipu. Competing incantation traditions in Aramaic, as well as a diminishing network of scholarship beyond the walls of Uruk, led to more interplay between these two fields of priestly knowledge. There was an effort to portray their professions as belonging to the traditions of deep antiquity, whether by collecting ancient exemplars into new and innovate arrangements, or by creating new compositions in the style of older traditions. At Uruk, these priests used prayers, hymns, and incantations as a vehicle for promoting the theological and scholarly innovations of the scribal workshop, and as a point of interaction with the broader public.

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